Perhaps no recent technology has more applications for business intelligence thanblockchain. Blockchain is more commonly known as the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin.

It provides tamper-proof data that can’t be altered or deleted without detection. To achieve this, it creates permanent records spread across several computers within a network. This makes blockchain impossible to hack.

But blockchain’s applications go way beyond cryptocurrencies. Its business intelligence applications can streamline and improve functionality in dramatic ways.

Here are four examples of how blockchain is already driving business intelligence.

1.) Transforming global business-to-business transactions

Global business-to-business transactions are often vulnerable to fraud. Businesses use third-party companies to oversee these transactions for security as a result. However, this oversight can create delays and increase costs.

With blockchain, it’s possible to perform these transactions with no third-party oversight. Allowing businesses to perform these one-on-one transactions streamlines the process and keeps it more secure.

2.) Revolutionizing the worldwide supply chain

Blockchain gives companies greater ability to update their supply chains. For example, they can use it to track products from point of origin to point of sale.

Using blockchain, companies can track their resource consumption in real time. This means precise metering in anything from the oil and gas industry to municipal utilities.

With blockchain, measuring tools update as resource consumption happens, with no possibility of fraud.

3.) Recasting the way we invest

Companies used initial coin offerings (ICOs) to raise over$4 billion in 2017. ICOs are company-exclusive, blockchain-based tokens that startups issue to future clients in exchange for money. The clients redeem these for goods and services after the company launches.

ICOs allow startups to bypass traditional venture capital firms and banks for funding. Instead of trading equity shares for money, ICOs help startups raise capital while retaining ownership of their ideas in the process.

4.) Reconstructing public records handling

Blockchain provides a powerful way to track public records. By spreading records across multiple computers, it provides more security than centralized databases.

This has potential applications for every kind of database imaginable. Thinkmedical records andland title records. There’s not a single record database that won’t be more secure as a result of blockchain’s application.

Blockchain will take over records databases across both the public and private sectors as a result.

To Infinity and Beyond

All this barely scratches the surface of blockchain’s potential applications. Most haven’t even been thought of yet. Blockchain has amazing potential for creating secure, updated networks and transactions across the business marketplace.

Expect big things on the block in the coming months and years. The best part? You won’t even have to invest in the cryptocurrency flavor of the month to reap blockchain’s benefits in your business.